“Will you tell River I was asking about him?”
“Before or after I let him know you were fucked up from a fight?”
“Without all that bullshit, thanks.”
Skylar rolled his eyes and left, but I knew I could rely on him. Whether he liked it or not, he owed us that.
“You know,” Nash said from the corner he’d retreated to while Skylar had checked me out. “Whenever I see him, it reminds me how this all started—with your dad shutting down the trafficking rings up north.”
“We fought wars before that.”
“I know, but they ended. This feels like something that’s been going on forever.”
“You think this is about the Crows wanting to move skin through our turf?”
“Fuck the Crows. They’re a tool. We’ve used them to do our dirty work before. Makes sense that someone else is doing that now.”
“The Sambinis?”
Nash shrugged. “Maybe. That’s why they wanted us working on the motorways, right?”
“Apart from the cheap labour for shoddy construction and low-grade materials?”
“Yeah. Apart from that. They wanted us to keep their routes open. Disable the cameras when they had a load coming through.”
“I told you it was a distraction.” Saint’s voice came from the doorway. He looked as tired as I felt. “That easy raid on the coke, the scraps with the Crows. They wanted us busy while they sent snakes to takeyouout.”
Saint jabbed his finger at me as he pushed off the doorframe and slunk further into the room.
He came close enough that I could sense the fury seeping from him. “That gun was pointed at your head today, and I couldn’t get to you because I had three Crows on my back. If that nutter with the bow hadn’t been out there, you’d have been the one dead in the dirt.”
More coldness settled in my chest. “You saw all this?”
“Everything except where the bolt came from. I might’ve been able to guess if you hadn’t swung the dead dude over your head after the fact, but you fucked that up for me.”
There was no malice in Saint’s grim speech, the longest he’d made in months, only plain facts.
I searched for more. “We knew they were going to come at us today. It was the obvious thing to do when they’ve been all over us for months. But what did they get out of it? We fucking battered them.”
“They’d have got everything out of it if you’d died.”
“How? We’re strong without me. You’d vote in a new brother and carry on.”
Nash shifted in the torn-up armchair he’d settled in. “Not necessarily. There’s a lot of old guard don’t like the direction you’re taking us. They want the dirty cash and they don’t care where it comes from.”
“Okay, back up.” My head was spinning, the list of enemies too long to grasp. “Are you saying—”
“Wait.” Saint held up a hand and moved back to the door. He glanced out of it, then shut it behind him and leaned against it, one ear in this conversation, the other listening for approaching footsteps.
I took another breath and bore down on Nash, spearing him with my glare. “Are you saying this threat could’ve come from within?”
“I’m not saying anything concrete. Just that there’s people among us who’d gain from you not existing anymore. People who have connections out there.” Nash jerked his thumb to the window. “The Crows are nothing. We could destroy them tomorrow and they know it, so they’ve whored themselves out to whoever wants you dead and it’s about fucking time we found out who that is.”
I nodded. “Send Mateo. Tell him to do what needs doing to make a Crow sing, and do it properly this time. I don’t care what it takes.”
“What are you going to do? With a target on your back, you should stay here. Lay low.”
“That’s what they’d expect me to do.”
